Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

The state of Florida has decided that just maybe they need to do something about security and the Diebold machines. They issued a technical advisory that tends to vindicate Ion Sancho. In New York advocacy groups, individuals and civil rights groups have filed to intervene in the DoJ suit against the state. And it appears that Burlington, Vermont will be the first US city to elect it's mayor using "instant run-off voting"....

Many of us worked long and hard with folks in Mississippi to keep out the Diebold TSx machines their SoS was pushing on them. One of our cautions was that cash-strapped counties would end up having to buy more machines in order to have enough. That concern is being borne out in counties across the state. Humboldt Co., California gets a look at the Vote-PAD and likes what they saw. In Iowa there is talk that Gov. Vilsack may take a cue from New Mexico Gov. Richardson and push for a paper ballot....

Picking up in the tradition of California's Sec. of State Bruce McPherson, who seems to have a fondness for Friday night releases of important information which he hopes nobody will notice, Florida's Division of Elections Director, Dawn K. Roberts, issued a "Technical Advisory" memorandum calling for "enhancements to voting system security procedures that each supervisor of elections must address immediately." The memo was issued late this evening at the end of the work week.

Roberts' memo (posted in full below) would be the first official acknowledgment, to our awareness, by the state of Florida of the security concerns raised by the recent Leon County, FL "hack test" conducted by Election Supervisor Ion Sancho. That now-infamous test --- in which computer security professional Harri Hursti had managed to access and change information on the Diebold optical-scan voting machine memory cards --- resulted in the results of the test election being completely flipped, without a trace being left behind.

In her "Technical Advisory", Roberts fails to mention that "hack test" or the equipment it occurred on --- or even Diebold themselves --- by name. Rather, the alert alludes to McPherson's recent --- and stunning --- "conditional re-certification" of Diebold voting equipment in the state, in light of confirmation of the newly discovered "interpreted code" used by the machines. That type of software source code is specifically banned by the federal Help America Vote Act guidelines. During his re-certification of Diebold --- after the company's equipment had previously been de-certified in the state for use of illegal software patches, and subsequently found to have failed atleast 20% of the time in a massive test held last summer --- McPherson mandated specific security procedures to be used with Diebold equipment in the state of California.

"This technical advisory therefore applies to all voting systems deployed in Florida," writes Roberts in the memo issued this evening...

She's fought her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the very same day that the facade cracked on the front of the building and a chunk of marble --- just above an allegorical statue representing "Order" and just below the words "Equal Justice" --- came crashing to the ground. The highest court in the land refused to hear her case.

Along the way, the Dept. of Justice has done everything in their power (and then some) to keep her quiet. They invoked the rarely used "State Secrets Privilege" to shut her up --- going so far as to use it, without explanation, to remove her and her own attorneys from the courtroom when arguing their case against her.

In at least two unclassified Senate briefings, FBI officials confirmed the validity of her reports, but the information from those briefings was then retroactively classified by the DoJ --- which served to gag the Congress from further investigation on the matter. The DoJ even retroactively classified a 60 Minutes profile on her --- after it had already aired!

All of that, even after the DoJ's own Inspector General's report found Sibel Edmonds' allegations to be "credible" and "serious" and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI." The unclassified version of that report was only released by the DoJ after prodding from Congressional members and the 9/11 Commission.

Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Members Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Pat Leahy (D-VT) both publicly support her case and would like to allow the Congress and the American public to hear more.

Want to know what it is that she knows? What it is that she feels we the people ought to know about? And what it is that has led her to form the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition to support other patriots like herself who are trying to expose crimes and corruption from within our own government? We do. And we hope you do too.

Therefore, The BRAD BLOG is pleased to support a new petition calling on Congress to hold a joint Senate and House Judiciary Committee investigation, with open hearings into all of these matters.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. You all remember that, right? Let's make this happen. Please sign her petition right now.

And please spread the word to other blogs and bloggers (and perhaps even the MSM may want to get in on the act --- it is their country too, after all), and ask them to do the same. This one's important.

We've reported over the last few months about various aspects of Edmonds' case. However, for those unfamiliar with the larger pictures of Edmonds' allegations and what she would like to testify about before the Congress and the American people --- all based on what she heard and saw first-hand while working as an FBI translator just after 9/11 --- please see the following bullet point summary of just a few of her explosive whistleblowing allegations...

Known for her role in the 2000 Presidential debacle, Katherine Harris has been linked to illegal campaign contributions funneled from a defense contractor who has also been convicted for bribing former Representative Cunningham.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Harris tried to secure a $10-million Federal deal for the convicted defense contractor. At about the same time, one of Harris' aides, Mona Yost, was hired by the same contractor.

Katherine Harris denies knowledge of the illegal campaign contributions. Randy "Duke" Cunningham is being sentenced today for accepting bribes in exchange for securing Federal contracts and other favors.

Recent court filings by Patrick Fitzgerald indicate that Bob Woodward may have audio tapes that of who leaked information about CIA operative Valerie Plame to him. Woodward's source may also be Novak's second source. Novak's first source is already known to be Karl Rove.

Novak's second source has always been a matter of great speculation. Up to this time, Novak described his second source as "no partisan gunslinger". Jeralyn at TalkLeft guesses that Novak's second source may be Stephen Hadley or Richard Armitage.

Yesterday, Brit Hume and the "Fox All-Stars" were in denial about Bush's dreadful poll numbers from the CBS survey. Now that Fox is out with their own poll, what excuse will poor Brit have to dream up now? (Aside from not even posting a link to their own brand-new poll on the front of their own website?)

By the way, one good point that Chris Matthews made yesterday (yeah, it can happen) is that he likes to check the internals of such polls to see how the Independents are polling. Thus, avoiding the over-weighting of Dems vs Reps or vice versa in any particular poll (as the Bush dead-enders had been complaining about the CBS survey which was weighted heavier with Dems).

Well, a very quick look at the internals of the following three polls, revealed that Independents are now even less enamored with Bush than are Dems! Go figure...

Only 36 percent of voters approve of the job President Bush is doing, while 58 percent disapprove, his worst approval rating in a Quinnipiac University national poll and down 9 points from his 45 - 48 percent approval rating one year ago.

A few additional numbers of note (we suggest you click through each poll to get still more)...

From Quinnipiac's poll: Even the reddest of "red states" believe a warrant should be obtained before wiretapping, by a 51 to 46 margin. Overall, the numbers are 55 to 42 percent that the government should get court orders for this type of surveillance. And here the media has been repeating the BushCo line that the NSA eavesdropping is "a winning issue for the President". What a shock. They're both wrong again.

As to who should take Congress this November...

Quinnipiac: "By a 49 - 37 percent margin, voters want the Democrats to win control of Congress in this year's House and Senate elections."

I'm working on a number of important articles, of late, so have been a bit quieter here than usual. (Thanks to David E. and John G. for ably picking up the slack during my distraction!) Stay tuned for noise soon, of course.

In the meantime, please take a moment to fill out this BlogAds survey if you could. Should only take a few minutes, and it'll better help blogs like this one raise money and stay in business through the help of the folks at BlogAds.com.

The more of you who fill it out, the better! It takes just a few minutes.

Please enter "BradBlog.com" in the "Referring Blog" question on the last page so we can get some idea who the BRAD BLOG readers are...so I can spy on you for a change!

UPDATE: The poll is now completed. Thanks to those who were able to fill it out before it came down!

Today's news emphasis has moved from California to New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The news about the DoJ suing New York was expected and now it's here. The DoJ seems to want chaos in elections and they may get it. In Pennsylvania the state 'supremes' have decided that state law can be followed or ignored when it suits officials and they have allowed counties to go ahead and change voting systems. In Florida a bill has been introduced to require a voter verified paper ballot. And in Maryland it seems that the Governor is not convinced that the Diebold code question has been answered satisfactorily and he is concerned. Meanwhile there are protesters in California and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signs the paper ballot bill into law....

Yeah, we realize that new evidence showing Bush is a liar is not really a "News Flash" to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave (or listening to Rush, Sean and O'Reilly) for the past five years.

But this just in from Murray Waas of National Journal (who deserves a Pulitzer, in our opinion, for his tremendous investigative reporting in recent months!)...

[T]he one-page summary, several senior government officials said in interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to the president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in Tenet's presence.
...
Bush personally read the one-page summary in Tenet's presence during the morning intelligence briefing, and the two spoke about it at some length.
...
Cheney received virtually the same intelligence information, according to the same records and interviews. The president's summaries have been shared with the vice president as a matter of course during the Bush presidency.

And what did that one-page summary, which even George W. Bush could read, say? That the "aluminum tubes" he and Cheney (and Rice and others) touted as proof of Saddam's nuclear program were not actually to be used in a nuclear program. Oh, and also that Saddam would use WMD, and/or share them with terrorists, only if attacked first by the United States.

In other words, add this to the file of things they knew and later claimed to not know. Like terrorists interested in flying planes into buildings, and the possibility that the levees might be breached in New Orleans.

This is truly amazing reporting from a very dangerous situation. A film crew from UK's Channel Four was threatened with execution while filming the Taliban burning a school accused of teaching Western ideology.

It seems that the camera man is on his knees as members of the Taliban threaten the lives of the film crew. Before the matter is resolved, machine gun fire is heard and the Taliban men scramble for cover. Pakistani special police are seen running into the frame shooting wildly into the air.

As the Taliban disappear, the Pakistani police begin beating the film crew. The producer falls to the ground and he is repeatedly hit with an assault riffle. The police are clearly not trained well. Apparently, all of the Taliban were able to escape this encounter.

President Bush visited Afghanistan earlier this week and trumpeted success of the war. Facts on the ground call Mr. Bush's claims into question.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.
...
At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.

Of course there are other programs they're not talking about. David Edwards has blogged about it repeatedly here on The BRAD BLOG. We reported (each time with video) on NSA whistleblower Russel Tice trying to sound the alarm that the warrantless surveillance programs were much bigger than the White House was admitting. One report is here from mid-January, then again here from mid-Februrary, and finally yet again last Monday.

Just one more wave yet to fully breach the Bush Administration's crumbling levee, we suppose.

Our good friend, the mysterious and legendary Freeway Blogger posted the above yesterday, one prophetic day before Bush's latest nonsense about "hunting down bin Laden." Bush was just kidding, of course. FB wasn't.

"American citizens once took for granted that every vote mattered, but no longer. It is time that we, the elected state officials, work to restore American's confidence in our electoral systems and undertake reform that moves to eliminate skepticism and uncertainty." --- NM Governor Bill Richardson's 3/1/06 Letter "To the State Officials of the 50 United States of America" (Posted in full below)

Today Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico made a powerful statement to officials in all states (see full letter below) as he announced that tomorrow he would be signing legislation that would require the state of New Mexico to go to a paper ballot based voting system. No longer will the state use Sequoia DRE (touch-screen) voting machines...the machines that reported large numbers of undervotes in previous elections...The same machines that disenfranchised minority voters...The technology Richardson describes as "simply fail[ing] to pass the test of reliability" in his open letter published today.

The Governor has also announced that the bill's signing ceremony will be webcast. The announcement says:

We hope you will join the Governor, concerned citizens and legislators as the Governor's signature moves New Mexico forward by ensuring that our democracy continues to flourish. The live webcast will begin Thursday at 11:00am MST (1:00pm Eastern) and can be viewed at:

Please watch the webcast, take a moment to look at the Governor's proposals, and sign the petition to get your state, and the rest of America, to make every vote count

This all sounds wonderful, except???opponents of the legislation managed to get the legislation amended so that voting systems "owned or used" as of 1 May 2006 that do not use paper ballots can continue to be used until, among other things, debt on purchases of those machines are paid by the state. Then, the bill that appropriated funds to pay off the debt died in committee. Now the state needs to find the money to pay off the debt.

UPDATE 3/3/06: Signing ceremony video and petition calling on all states to join NM now here.

MSNBC Countdown reports on the tapes of FEMA/Bush teleconferences held the day before Katrina hit New Orleans. Bush was on the call when the experts said they were concerned about the levees and a "disaster within a disaster" at the Superdome.

Just hours after AP released the tapes, the White House responded with a transcript where Brownie says that Bush was "engaged." A very weak rebuttal, indeed. What's more is that the White House had earlier refused to turn over this same document to the Congressional investigation on Katrina.